Mr. Achim Steiner - United Nation’s Under Secretary General & UN Environment Programme Executive Director - Indeed there are many island nations who are doomed already now, condemned if you want to disappear. Therefore there is no question that we have to act. And that is just the beginning of the visible impact of climate change. The invisible part, the bits that we have not necessarily understood that are happening around us are also on their way.

CLIMATE REFUGEES:

25 million people uprooted in 2007

President Tong of the Island Nation of Kiribati:We have whole communities, having to be relocated, villages which have been there over a decade maybe the century and now they have to be relocated, and where they’ve being living for the last few decades is no longer there. It has been eroded.

Dubai – 1.2 million residents in the United Arab Emirates considered at risk

There may be more islands, either uninhabited and/or not reported, that have submerged or are sinking due to climate change.

President Tong of the Island Nation of Kiribati:We may be at the point of no return; our small low lying island will be submerged. It’s an issue of human survival.If the world community, the different countries don’t kick the Carbon habits, there will be other countries next on the line.

Supreme Master Ching Hai : According to the scientists, there could be more than just one disaster. Rising sea level is not the only worrying event, disease will also rise. They already do so in some parts of the world.

Unless people change to a more benevolent lifestyle that is respecting all lives, then we will beget life and our lives be spared. And nature will restore the balance and repair all damages. I wish to see that day soon, in my lifetime. The more vegetarian people join the circle, the more chance we have to save the planet.

REFERENCE (original numbers before rounding)

Maldives – 369,031 residents, southwest of India

Marshall Islands – 60,000 residents

Kiribati – 107,817 residents, approximately 30 islands submerging

Tonga – 116,921 residents

Vanuatu – 211,971 residents, some of whom have already been evacuated

Solomon Islands – 566,842 residents

Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea – 2,500 residents

Shishmaref in Alaska, USA – 600 residents

Kivalini in Alaska, USA – 400 residents

Over 2,000 other islands in Indonesia (population not known)

Dubai – 1,241,000 residents in the United Arab Emirates considered at risk

Rajendra Pachauri : There is a grim outcome that the world would have to face, in terms of sea level rise due to thermal expansion alone, and our estimate of this level of increasing sea (level) is 0.4 to 1.4 meters due to thermal expansion alone, and if you add to this the amount of water that would be released and would add to sea level rise on the account of melting of the ice bodies then we already committed the world to a threat, which is going to affect a large number of small island states, low line coast areas across the world that clearly, gives us an absolute warning that we have no time to lose at all and we have to ensure that we start reducing emission of green house gases, as quickly as possible.

President Tong of Kiribati:I take every opportunity to express our position to explain our situation, as the minister has explained the Kiribati is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Along with our other pacific island relations, of a similar geographical structure and also other countries in other different oceans in another parts of the world which have the same structure that we have. The Kiribati’s highest point in our Island is about average is about 2 meters above sea level.

I think we are, we might be beyond redemption, we may be at the point of no return, where the emission in the atmosphere will carry on with the momentum, will carry on to contribute to climate change, to sea level rise to the extend that in time, our small low lying island will be submerged. Because one has to feel the reality of the situation, and in order to feel the reality of the situation you have got to be there when the tides are coming over, and your are running around chasing your house goods, because the cases are floating all around, and you are trying to chase them after the waves have come. We have a whole communities, having to be relocated, villages which have been there over a decade maybe the century, and now they have to be relocated, where they’ve being living for the last few decades is no longer there.

It has been eroded. According to the scenarios, the worst possible case scenario, Kiribati will be submerged, within the century. It’s not an issue of economic growth; it’s an issue of human survival. And I think this is the point, it’s about human survival. For some at this point in time. If the world community, the different countries don’t kick the Carbon habits, there will be other countries next on the line, we would have been long gone, but I think the next countries will be next on the line.

Mr Achim Steiner (United Nation’s Under Secretary General & UN Environment Programme Executive Director):Therefore there is no question that we have to act, and yes maybe there are many countries who will not immediately face the prospects of Kiribati, but indeed there are many island nations who are doomed already now, condemned if you want by the end of this century, to disappear. And that is just the beginning of the visible impact of climate change. The invisible part, the bits that we have not necessarily understood that are happening around us are also on their way.

Paul Tobasi – Government Representative of the Carteret Islands – It’s not their wish to go, but because the situation; it’s forcing them to move. Because today, there is also literally no food people can rely on. I think that is why most people around here are willing to go; to accept the resettlement.

Louise (F): Wonderful. And we’re going to load up those websites, links to those websites of our own because I think that’s incredibly interesting and important. Supreme Master, we move on to environmental refugees. A recent report by the Aid Agency Tearfund, estimated there are currently 25 million environmental refugees, which is more than 22 million officially recognized political and economic refugees.

And according to Dr. Janos Bogardi, Director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn, environmental deterioration currently displaces up to 10 million people per year. And there are expected to be 50 million environmental refugees by 2010. However, international conventions do not recognize environmental refugees unless such they do not have the same rights to financial and material support. What can we do to help the environmental refugees?

Supreme Master Ching Hai : What can we do? They are refugees definitely. Ur. Because if we don’t have global warming then no one would be a climate refugee, would they? So no one would like to be a refugee in this case. So now, first we can help them to get back on their feet. The one who has meaning… mean and power, yes. We must consider their refugee status, legally, because they are refugees by all means. And by stopping global warming, we can help reduce this refugee issue.

POZNAN, Poland, Dec 8 (Reuters) - The impact of climate change could uproot around six million people each year, half of them because of weather disasters like floods and storms, a top U.N. official said on Monday.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) was making plans based on conservative estimates that global warming would force between 200 million and 250 million people from their homes by mid-century, said L. Craig Johnstone, the U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.

Johnstone said relief agencies would need to aid almost three million people a year displaced by sudden disasters.

Another three million would likely migrate due to gradual changes like rising sea levels, and be more able to plan.

UNHCR statistics show 67 million people were uprooted around the world at the end of 2007, 25 million of them because of natural disasters.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Dec 1-12 summit of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Warner said 24 million people around the world had become climate refugees already, according to an estimate made by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.